The Man Who Loved Dogs
(Paperback, UK ed.)
Publishing Details
The Man Who Loved Dogs
By (Author) Mr Leonardo Padura
Translated by Peter Bush
Bitter Lemon Press
Bitter Lemon Press
2nd February 2015
20th November 2014
UK ed.
United Kingdom
Classifications
General
Fiction
Fiction in translation
863.7
Physical Properties
Paperback
576
Width 129mm, Height 198mm
Description
"The Man Who Loved Dogs, by Cuban author Leonardo Padura, is a stunning novel, chronicling the evisceration of the Communist dream and one of the most "ruthless, calculated and useless" crimes in history. All credit to Bitter Lemon for publishing such a readable English translation...There can be few more insightful explorations of the ways in which communism corroded the human spirit and justified the most monstrous of crimes." - FinancialTimes
Cuban writer Ivn Crdenas Maturell meets a mysterious foreigner on a Havana beach who is always in the company of two Russian wolfhounds. Ivan quickly names him "the man who loved dogs". The man eventually confesses that he is actually Ramn Mercader, the man who killed Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940, and that he is now living in a secret exile in Cuba after being released from jail in Mexico.
Moving seamlessly between Ivn's life in Cuba, Mercader's early years in Spain and France, and Trotsky's long years of exile, The Man Who Loved Dogs is Leonardo Padura's most ambitious and brilliantly executed novel yet. It is the story of revolutions fought and betrayed, the ways in which men's political convictions are continually tested and manipulated, and a powerful critique of the role of fear in consolidating political power.
Reviews
"A stunning novel, chronicling the evisceration of the Communist dream and one of the most "ruthless, calculated and useless" crimes in history." Financial Times When this novel was published in Spanish, it received literary acclaim across Europe and rightly so, for it is a monumental work." Independent "Padura has entered the Latin American Modernist canon by writing a Russian novel with a Tolstoyan passion for historical trifles and Dostoyevskyan pleasure in examining the moral life of its characters" NY Times
Author Bio
Leonardo Padura was born in Havana in 1955. A novelist, journalist, and critic, he is the author of several novels, one collection of essays, and a volume of short stories. His Havana series crime novels featuring the detective Mario Conde, published in English by Bitter Lemon Press, have been translated into many languages and have won literary prizes around the world.
